A family wedding, a ‘fine race’ and Miss Alice’s manor house
The marriage law in the United States
An interesting case of the conflict of Jewish and Civil law in the United States, involving the marriage of an uncle to his niece, had to be solved by me professionally not long ago, but just enough to conceal the identity of my clients, even at this distance, from you. The Maryland code prohibits, in its table of persons within the so-called Levitical degrees of consanguinity, the marriage of both aunt to nephew and of uncle to niece. While the Old Testament (Leviticus xviii., 12, 13 and 14) forbids marriage of a man with his aunt expressly, the Rabbis have held (as is well-known) that the prohibition does not include the niece. So when Mr N., about a week before the nuptials of his favourite daughter to her relative, learned for the first time there was doubt about the legality of the marriage, he was astounded.
Mr George Meredith and the Jews
The conversation had turned on the lack of imagination, the “stodginess” if the Anglo-Saxon race, and Mr Meredith had humourously suggested as a cure the abduction of as many French women as possible and their forcible marriage to English peasants. His interviewer suggested as an alternative to his heroic modern version of the Rape of the Sabines an intermixture with the Jews. “The Jews,” replied Mr Meredith, “are a fine race. I have a very great regard for the Jews and I confess I largely sympathise with Prince Bismark’s view that the addition of a little Semitic champagne to our Teutonic stock would improve our beer.”
Waddesdon Manor
According to the Spectator, Miss Alice de Rothschild’s country seat, with the gems of pictorial art…is not only one of the latest examples of an English country-house and its contents, but has never yet seen an equal in England. The objects are all the best examples of their kind, each besides being precious is beautiful. Each and every one of them forms part of a whole, so that the harmony of colour and form is never for a moment interrupted, but only enhanced by each object in the kind of setting for which the original artists intended it.